Last August, we announced our involvement in the Year of the Engineer initiative at Discovery Place Science in Charlotte, NC. After months of planning and preparation and even a dry run at our office, Little took over Discovery Place on April 15, 2018 and we had a blast!

Discovery Place Science in Charlotte, NC, has launched the Year of the Engineer. During the 2017-18 school year, they aim to have 250 engineers create 2,500 unique STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) experiences that will impact 250,000 guests at Discovery Place. And Little will be playing a big role in helping them achieve those impacts.

Most teachers have the summer off and spend that time NOT thinking about the upcoming school year (I know, I’m married to one.) But that was not the case for two teachers from Rock Hill Schools in South Carolina, at least for the week they spent at Little on a STEM externship…

If you were looking to have your faith restored that the next generation will make a difference in the world, you didn’t have to look further than the teams of high school students at an Engineering Expo that I recently had the honor of judging.

Gen X. Baby Boomers. The Silent Generation. And Gen Y aka Millennials aka Digital Natives. Four generations in the workplace. It’s a topic we’ve all heard about, especially all the data, surveys, and trends. But what do we do with all that data? What is it telling us? What adjustments do we need to make in how we communicate? Thanks to Building Design + Construction Magazine, I recently had the chance to explore this topic with 50 other A/E/C industry leaders.

I recently attended the North Carolina Low Impact Development Summit held in Raleigh, NC, where I learned, among many things, that the faculty and students at NC State made shirts that turned ADIDAS into an acronym: All Day I Dream About Stormwater. While I don’t ADIDAS, I do have a passion for the topic of LID, and wanted to share some of what I learned at the summit. READ MORE

This week is National Engineers Week, or Eweek for short. Part of Eweek is introducing girls to STEM careers. So I asked the women in our Engineering and Land Development Studios to take part in a Q&A and offer their insight about why they pursued a STEM career, their school experience, and how we can increase the number of women in STEM fields.

Little supports many great causes that usually are specific to each office. However, last month the Movember cause gave us the ability to raise awareness (and even a little bit of money) across our footprint. It was furry, and at times ugly, but it was all in the name of awareness for Men’s Health issues, specifically prostate and testicular cancer.

The ideas and insights shared on SpeakEasy are intended to stimulate thought, inspire innovation and fuel breakthrough ideas that create a better future for people. SpeakEasy is authored by the restless minds at Little, a national, multi-disciplinary design firm.